Cognitive Distortions

I've always heard that happiness is a choice.  I know that happiness can't be dependent on things or events or people.  But let's face it, sometimes crappy stuff happens...sometimes you wake up feeling grumpy...sometimes your body doesn't feel good.  How can happiness still be a choice in these moments?

I've been reading a book lately this is changing my feelings about depression & moods.

"Depression is not an emotional disorder at all!...Every bad feeling you have is the result of your distorted negative thinking.  Illogical pessimistic attitudes play the central role in the development and continuation of all your symptoms.  Intense negative thinking always accompanies a depressive episode...Negative thoughts that flood your mind are the actual cause of your self-defeating emotions."

Hmm.  What if this is really true?  Then we have the power to change our moods, if we can change those thoughts...and we have the desire to want to change.

Imagine wallowing around in a mud pit.  It's confining. It's slow-moving.  It's restricting.  It's limiting.  But it's familiar, and warm on cold days, and cool on hot days, and safe because you know where the boundaries are.  But sometimes it's hard to watch all the other people who aren't wallowing around in the mud.  They run, they move, they explore, they learn new things, they travel to new places, they visit others.  You can't do that because you're living in the mud pit. If you were to get out, it would feel sooo different, unfamiliar, scary.

I think negative thoughts are that way too.  We get used to our cognitive distortions, even though we may know they are false.  But they are familiar.  If we even try to change them, the new thoughts feel so fake & unfamiliar, and not like us....and so we go back to our old ways of thinking.  And we never get anywhere.


The first major key to understanding our moods is to understand that our emotions result entirely from the way we look at things.  "It is an obvious neurological fact that before you can experience any event, you must process it with your mind and give it meaning.  You must understand what is happening to you before you can feel it.  It is not the actual events, but your perceptions that result in changes in mood.  When you are sad, your thoughts will represent a realistic interpretation of negative events.  When you are depressed or anxious, your thoughts will always be illogical, distorted, unrealistic, or just plain wrong."

***We see the world:  positive, negative, or neutral events.
***We interpret the event with a series of thoughts that continually flow through your mind.        This is called "internal dialogue."
***Our feelings are created by our thoughts and not the actual events.  All experiences must be processed through your brain and given a conscious meaning before you experience any emotional response.

When we use our cognitive distortions to interpret an event, we create an illusion of truth.  These illusions feel just as valid and realistic as the genuine feelings created by undistorted thoughts.  Thus we reinforce a self-perpetuating vicious cycle.  
"Because you believe whatever your depressed brain tells you, you find yourself feeling negative about almost everything....the negative emotion feels realistic and lends an aura of credibility to the distorted thought which created it.  The cycle goes on and one, and you are eventually trapped.  The mental prison is an illusion, but it seems real because it feels real."

It's time to get out of the mud pit.